Blow Out (1981) - Soundtrack

Jeff Bond, in his liner notes for this Intrada release, states Blow Out had "one of the most devastatingly downbeat and tragic movie endings of the decade," and that is not mere critical hyperbole. It is an observation of a painful and blunt truth. A truth that played no small part in why Blow Out was a commercial and critical disaster in 1981.

I vividly remember sitting slack-jawed and staring heartbroken up at a sobbing John Travolta, fireworks rapturously exploding above him, while Pino Donaggio's solemn music swelled and hammered the inescapable truth and tragic failure home. The soul crushing weight of the film's closing line, "It's a good scream."

Yet I still staggered out of the theater wanting an album of the film's music. But it was not to be, at first.

According to album producer Douglass Fake, in his Tech Talk notes, Donaggio recorded 55-minutes of music for the film. Those recordings were then edited, by Donaggio, down to 48-minutes for a possible soundtrack album presentation. One that did not materialize until Intrada dusted those tapes off and released this compact disc in 2014.

The good news is that Donaggio's 48-minute edit not only survived in pristine condition, but also retained his music for all of the key sequences in the film. Something that make the bad news a tad palatable. The 48-minute edit are the only recordings of the score to have survived the ravages of time and licensor indifference.